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Posts tagged: Wall Street Journal

Look around the industry. What do you see? Offset presses. Digital printers. Wide format inkjet printers. Offset litho was discovered in 1900, but did not gain traction until the 1950s. Digital color printing was introduced in 1993. Wide format inkjet came in 1995. Walk into any plant; they may have all three.

It took a while for all three printing technologies to find their place in print production. All three were challenged by a status quo. Offset was once described as “only for quick and dirty printing.” Ironically, they said the same for digital color. The president of Xerox was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying almost the same about inkjet printing (2004). Now Xerox is becoming a force in inkjet.

Yet, all three processes make money for printers. What will be the next big thing? The technology is already here. We just have to find markets for it.

Flatbed UV inkjet can print on any substrate—plastics, wood, glass, board, metal, ceramics, textiles, carpeting, and more. Commercial printers print on paper. Where is the market for printing on all those other substrates? Read more »

Kodak announced its third quarter 2011 financials yesterday and the picture is not a pretty one: sales down from Q3 2010 and a loss of $222 million. Kodak positioned the news as “Kodak Makes Steady Progress in Digital Transformation During Challenging Times.” The Wall Street Journal took a much dire view, saying “Eastman Kodak Co. warned Thursday that it will have trouble staying in business if it can’t squeeze more money out of its patent portfolio or raise new funds by selling debt.”

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Kodak was planning to “seek partners to share the costs or possibly sell” the Kodak Gallery and NexPress businesses. In a conversation that I had with Kodak this morning, it became clear that the Wall Street Journal had misinterpreted Kodak’s statements and jumped to an incorrect conclusion about divestment. During the investor conference Kodak did say that it needed to transform and position its Kodak Gallery and NexPress businesses (it made the same point about image sensors and OLED businesses). Kodak, however, says that no mention was made of divestment. For NexPress, Kodak said that it intends to explore partnerships and alliances, as well as look at segmentation and licensing opportunities. Read more »